Most people who use computers don’t think much about domain and subdomain or how the website click. All they want to see are the result of the inquiry they’ve searched. However, there is a much larger underbelly; a web of metadata, XML sitemaps, schema markup, and site architecture provides the framework generating a strong search presence.

Suppose you are a business owner and wanted to more about the ins and outs of digital marketing. In that case, an SEO agency can provide you with services such as knowing about Off-page SEO techniques so that you may not struggle anymore, technically.

What is a Subdomain?

A subdomain lets you separate portions of your site that are extensive enough to warrant their dedicated hierarchy without going through all of the trouble of setting up a new place with a new domain or confusing visitors with a completely different root domain. In reality, setting up a subdomain is essentially the same thing as setting up a new website.

You can tell you’re on a subdomain when the beginning of the URL is separated from the main URL by a period. For example, “blog.myart.com.” Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to fit specific keywords into your main URL.

In this example, ‘blog’ is the subdomain, ‘myart’ is the primary domain, and ‘.com’ is the top-level domain (TLD). You can use any text as your subdomain, but you want to make sure it’s easy to type and remember.

The work of the subdomain is to set up a separate website or webpage under the same domain name. Subdomains are relatively simple to set up under any root domain that you control. Setting up a subdomain is more straightforward than setting up a subfolder in some cases. This is one of the reasons a technical team will suggest subdomains.

Please take note, so as not to get confused, top-level domains and second-level domains refer to the hierarchy of web addresses, not how they relate to your website and not the same as subdomains.

What subdomains are used for?

A subdomain is, as the name would suggest, an additional section of your leading domain name. You create subdomains to help organize and navigate to different sections of your main website. You can have as many subdomains as necessary to get to your website’s other pages within your main domain.

Let me give you a couple of quick pointers on when you want to use subdomains, so this is not an entirely one-sided blog post. Before you decide whether you need one or not, here are a few advantages to having a subdomain:

1. Content

You want your main site to have one focus, especially if it’s an e-commerce page. People don’t read websites like books, from beginning to end. Please keep it simple and give your audience one clear call to action. Because you don’t want to overwhelm people on your main page, you probably have tons of additional content ideas and nowhere to put them.

Inbound links come naturally to well-written content, which will contribute to your results. One of the best things that companies can do to improve their SEO results is to maintain a blog to create valuable content for their visitors and customers. Some companies like to keep their blog separate for certain reasons. Having a blog on a subdomain means you have two website hosting.

Integrating a blog into your company strategy with high-quality, relevant content is a great way to boost your SEO. With an integrated site, backlinks and social media shares generated from the content will help the other pages on the main site rank higher and build the root site’s link profile.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Subdomains will improve your search ranking and website traffic significantly and pump up search results. Search engines recognize subdomains as completely separate web addresses from your root domain. So, you can use your subdomain to get new traffic and send them to your main site. Essentially, you’ll have two sites working together to sell your tomatoes.

First of all, there’s no such thing as an organization for the organization’s sake when it comes to site structure and hierarchy. Subdomains work as the middle man for any of your SEO efforts for your main page. According to some SEO experts, another benefit is that subdomains can help build niche authority.

3. Budget

Let’s say your online tomato business has taken off, and you want to expand. Despite this new venture, you want to maintain a tight budget. In this situation, creating an additional subdomain to share your latest products solves both problems. Not only is it free to create another subdomain, but you’re also not deviating from the main message on your root domain. Essentially, you get multiple domains for the price of one.

Additionally, you only have to pay hosting fees for one site. So if you’re particularly budget-conscious, this might appeal to you.

4. Target a Niche

With subdomains, you have the opportunity to reach a niche audience that you wouldn’t easily reach with your main site. You can create multiple subdomains to target different audiences. Multiple subdomains with specific themes that differ from your main page will help you reach a larger audience than your site working alone.

Subdomains are ideal for ranking and building authority in a smaller, niche market—and this will only help you beef up your main domain’s authority, too.

5. Create a Mobile Site

Mobile-friendliness is essential if you want your page to stay competitive on search engine results pages (SERPs). You can create a subdomain optimized for mobile devices. You can take the same content from your main page and put it on your mobile subdomain. Then, design your mobile subdomain with small screens and faster load times in mind.

Furthermore, you can also use a subdomain to organize your website to separate the page. Many companies use a subdomain to create an online store, mobile websites, location-specific sites, and create a sub-section.

6. Expand Your Brand

Having a subdomain builds credibility for your brand. You can demonstrate your expertise in multiple areas with highly specialized subdomains. When people visit your tomato site, they’ll see you as an expert in tomatoes, from recipes to additional tomato products. You’ll gain their trust and be a loyal customer.

For companies that sell merchandise, in addition to their regular product lines or service, they can put their eCommerce store on subdomains, which means having separate plans for local optimization and link building. Comcast Business is an excellent example of how to use subdomains, support a better brand experience.

With eCommerce, some companies prefer to use subdomains because it keeps their blog separate from their eCommerce site.

Why Should I Avoid Subdomains?

It may seem like a great idea to set up your eCommerce website by using subdomains. But using a subdomain on your website makes your URL structure look bigger. Subdomains are not regarded as ‘proper websites in the eyes of Google users. You will be responsible for more hosting fees as subdomains require separate hosting accounts.

Subdomains may not yield your geolocation signal for search engines. Search engine crawlers will find it nearly impossible to crawl your site for new content. Then you don’t have full control over the content if something could go totally wrong.

Just as Google says, both your subdomain and root site will be crawled and indexed, but that’s just the problem. By keeping your content separate from your website, you decrease the SEO value of your main website and lose many visitor benefits and ranking factors.

Today’s organic algorithms are smart enough to know that the same primary domain name is directly connected to both methods as long as they are hosted on the same server. Single domain (like www) gets more weightage than different subdomain names.

A Much Better Alternative

If you’re into the SEO world, you are probably familiar with the myth that subdomains are considered bad for SEO and can damage the website. This debate is sparked by the fact that Google treats subdomains as separate entities to your main domain.

Instead of using a subdomain, use a subfolder. Since search engines usually see a subdomain as a separate entity from your website, adding content to a subdomain does little for search engine optimization (SEO). When your brand has separate websites, it waters down the effectiveness of your online presence.

Additionally, Google watches who is coming to your website, how long they’re there, and what they do. If your content is good, visitors will stay for a while. Google takes note of this and can increase your search engine rankings as a result – but only if the content is on your website.

The Final Words

Since subdomains are crawled separately, having the content and links on a subdomain – separate from the main site – means their results and authority are also divided. For the most part, Google treats subdomains and sub-folders alike. In fact, he says Google is smart enough to see your main domain and subdomain as being tied to the same website.

However, some sites have the advantages of a subdomain. The verdict is inconclusive whether the subdomain is good or bad, but more and more people are leaning toward the latter. Ultimately, the choice to use subdomains or subdirectories is up to you.

As you can see, it just doesn’t matter to Google. As stated above, both options have pros and cons, so you should do whatever works best for you and your company and make the most sense for your particular website.

An SEO agency, being a part of digital marketing, have extensive and profound knowledge in online marketing, SEO, technology, Google updates, and marketing trends. This blog post is originally published for this purpose.

FAQs

Are subdomains good for SEO?

According to Google, the site crawls, indexes, and ranks subdomains and subdirectories the same way. In the video below, Google Webmasters Trends Analyst John Mueller says, subdomains generally don’t hurt a site’s rankings. If you use a subdomain for your website, your site will be treated as a different website and will not drive any SEO benefit from the parent domain. Your company site and your subdomain will be two separate sites.

How do subdomains affect SEO?

Subdomains affect SEO in three different ways.

First, they allow you to insert keywords in the URL. If it is better to opt not to include a keyword in the URL, this is a great opportunity to fit in more challenging to rank for keywords.

The second way subdomains affect SEO is that they can improve user experience. If you have a complicated and large site where user experience is negatively affected, this needs to be resolved.

The third way SEO is affected is that subdomains can appeal to a more niche market if you struggle to grow an expansive domain authority.

What are the SEO implications of subdomains?

Using a subdomain enables you to streamline your site hierarchy and improve user navigation. This helps users find the information they’re looking for more efficiently, which is important for improving your SEO performance.

How many subdomains can a domain have?

Each domain name can have up to 500 subdomains. You can also add multiple levels of subdomains, such as info.blog.yoursite.com. A subdomain can be up to 255 characters long, but if you have multiple levels in your subdomain, each level can only be 63 characters long.